Chapter Text
“This is your new assignment.”
Ten years.
“His name is Iwaizumi Hajime.”
He’s been lost for ten years.
“He’s the owner of a multi-million dollar company.”
When he was eighteen, he washed up on the banks of the Yellow River.
“He is a billionaire, and has a great deal of security.”
Irihata-san found him. Irihata-san gave him a new life.
“You’ll have to be careful about this one.”
A new life as an assassin.
“Luckily, we know where he’s going to be next Saturday, and how he’s going to be vulnerable.”
Not that he really minded.
“This is where he’ll be. This is where you’ll do it.”
Anything to take away the pain.
“We’re counting on you, Oikawa-san.”
--
Oikawa Tooru. 28. Assassin. Brown-haired, brown-eyed, pale-skinned, undeniably stunning.
Also undeniably unable to remember his life before he was 18.
Sometimes he remembers snippets of it. A mother's laugh, a friend's hug. A father's smile, a lover's gentle caress.
But otherwise, he has a great gaping hole in the midst of his mind.
For those first two years, he had yearned to remember. He had yearned to know himself. At the beginning of his third year, he changed his mind and went about improving his killing skills instead.
“Oikawa. What the fuck are you doing?”
“Now, now, Kuroo, no need to be so vulgar.”
Oikawa looks at his long time friend, offering him a wide grin as he sets his pencil down.
“You’re drawing someone. This is an occasion where vulgarity is needed. Is he your new love interest?”
Kuroo Tetsurou. 28. Assassin. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, tan skin, good looking. The kind of guy who looks like an asshole and is an asshole. The kind of guy who knows just how to get under your skin.
But Oikawa is that kind of guy too.
“Don’t be jealous that I can reel in girls and guys, Kuroo. Everyone loves how I look.” Oikawa sends his friend a wink.
“This guy probably won’t when you kill him.” Kuroo plops down next to Oikawa in the seat beside his. “Irihata-san asked me to work with you on this case.”
Oikawa huffs. “I don’t need your lousy help.”
“You know you love it.”
Unfortunately, it’s true that with Kuroo’s help the case will be much, much easier. Oikawa, having researched his subject earlier on in the day, knows that this Iwaizumi Hajime will be a tough one.
Kuroo suddenly leans forwards and grabs the sketchbook, where Oikawa had been (somewhat mindlessly) drawing a picture of his target’s face. Without a reference. Oh, the irony kills him; how he’s been gifted with a photographic memory yet can’t remember his life before this.
“He’s a handsome one,” Kuroo notes. “It’ll be a shame to kill him.” And Kuroo, before Oikawa can stop him, flips back through the sketchbook pages. His eyes widen and he whistles. “That’s rather... obsessive.”
“Shut up,” Oikawa says, snatching the sketchbook back with a glare, feeling his face begin to blush. “He just looks familiar, okay?”
“Familiar enough that you would draw him over and over?” Kuroo asks, an eyebrow raised, before he pauses. “Wait, so, when you say familiar...”
“Like, from... before.” Oikawa stares at the face on his sketchbook, which looks impassively and unseeingly back. He sighs. The oh-so familiar frustration has returned, and is throbbing in the back of his mind. He wants to punch it in the face.
“Oh. Did you tell Irihata-san?”
Oikawa shakes his head mutely. “He’d kick me off the assignment. I don’t want that.”
“So you want to kill someone who might know who you are?” Kuroo smirks at him. Oikawa shoots him another venomous glare back.
“I’d given up on my past after, well, y’know, but something’s screaming at me to get looking again. To find who I was.”
There’s a pause, during which Kuroo seems surprisingly solemn. Then, he snickers, “Maybe it’s your hormones screaming at you to get laid.”
Oikawa throws his sketchbook at him.
--
There’s someone chasing him.
There’s someone chasing him, and now he’s falling.
A cold, harsh wetness envelops his body as he plunges into a river. He cries out, but blood comes out of his mouth instead. Blood and bullets.
And then there’s someone gripping his clothes. A man with spiky dark hair pulls him close, and says,
“I loved you. But you’re a murderer now.”
Oikawa wakes up with the feeling of desolation.
But you’re a murderer now.
Faces of those he’s killed flash through his mind. He never had inhibitions about killing, even though in the beginning, the core of him knew it was wrong. But he went on training, went on fighting, went on murdering despite that.
He had just wanted to be rid of the pain. The pain of losing someone. Of losing something. The worst part is that he doesn’t remember what that something even is. That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it?
He stares at the bunkbed above his, forcing his breaths to match Kuroo’s. Calming himself, he feels his frustration and regret and anger slowly fade away. It had taken him five years to master that skill, one that took away his sorrow.
It isn’t the first time he’s had dreams like that. In the first year, they were a regular occurrence. But they rarely meant anything, and often Oikawa felt like they were there to mock him. After his third year, he stopped having those dreams regularly. Sometimes, though, he finds himself waking in a cold sweat, his heart pounding, feeling a chilling sort of...
Fear.
Oikawa turns onto his side, peering at his sketchbook laid out on his nightstand. He finds himself reaching for it, careful not to knock his pencil onto the floor. Then, he flips to the page where he had been drawing Iwaizumi Hajime, businessman and billionaire. In the dim light, he can only just make out the man’s features; sturdy, solid, hard, handsome, and familiar as hell.
Why?
His fingers trace over the line of Iwaizumi Hajime’s jaw. He can almost imagine the feeling of the other man’s skin.
Why?
He sets his sketchbook down, aware that he’s being a little creepy. But what can he do? What can he do when he feels this tugging in his chest, this choking in his throat?
Why is this happening to him, and why is it happening now?
He feels that familiar burn in the back of his throat, the one that lets him know he’s about to cry. He hates it. He hates crying.
There’s nothing shameful about crying, Tooru.
Oikawa’s eyes snap open, feeling a flash of something fill his mind.
It won’t stop me...
From loving you.
--
“Ready?” Kuroo asks, his voice crackling waves in his ear.
Oikawa tilts his head, presses a hand to the earpiece. “You know I was born ready, Kuro-chan,” he says, singing the ‘-chan’.
“I wish you weren’t,” Kuroo mutters. Oikawa laughs, and adjusts his position on the rooftop, tightening his grip on his gun. Silence rings through his earpiece, and then Kuroo says, “You sure you want to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Oikawa asks, but he knows his voice is too light, too carefree.
“He might know something, about you.”
Oikawa stares down at the barrel of his sniper rifle without really seeing it. Finally, he says, “I’m over it.”
“As if I believe y–” There’s a sudden pause. “Oikawa, he’s there. This is your last chance to pull out.”
Oikawa ignores that last bit, and leans down to look through his scope. “Got him.”
“Oikawa.”
His finger rests on the trigger of his Barrett MRAD.
“Last chance.”
“Shut up, Kuroo,” Oikawa says harshly. He can see the back of Iwaizumi Hajime’s head.
Turn around.
His finger tightens. His pulse is unnaturally jumpy; the last time he felt like this on a job was his very first one. Unlike that time however, he wasn’t wishing that his target...
Turn around.
Oikawa takes a deep, shuddering breath. This might be his only chance at figuring something out about his past. But this is also a job. And didn’t he also say he was done with his old life? That he didn’t want to know?
Is he a coward, for not wanting to remember, for not wanting to know about the fear that wakes him in the night?
Just as he’s about to pull the trigger, Iwaizumi Hajime turns around.
--
“This is Tooru!”
“Hajime, come over here and introduce yourself!”
“You just told them my name though, okaa-san.”
“Hajime.”
A sigh. “I’m Hajime. It’s nice to meet you.”
A mother’s smile. “Go on, Tooru, say hello.”
--
“Iwa-chan! Let’s join the volleyball club!”
“Ehh? But I don’t want to play volleyball--Hey! Stop pulling on my clothes!”
“Iwa-chaaaaaan, pleaaaaaaaaaase?”
“...Fine, but only for a bit. I want to join the baseball club.”
--
“Your fangirls are fucking annoying, Oikawa.”
“Iwa-chan said a bad word!”
“Shut up, Trashykawa.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Am not.”
“Am too.”
“Am not!”
--
“Hey! Shittykawa! That’s the fourth fucking time this week, and it’s Thursday. The coach told you not to overwork yourself!”
“Sorry! Sorry, Iwa-cha--agh! Not the hair! I promise I’ll stop!”
“You better promise, or I’ll kick your ass, you dumbass.”
“Were you worried about me, Iwa-chan?”
“Go to hell.”
--
“’I’ this, ‘I’ that, it’s annoying!”
Pain, and then-
“Do you think you’re fighting by yourself? You’ve got to be kidding, you dumbass!”
--
“Iwa-chan... It hurts...”
“...I’ll be right there.”
--
“I thought I told you not to overwork yourself.”
“Iwa-chan, I’m sorry-”
“Are you really? Are you really sorry? Even though I told you, so many fucking times, to not fucking overwork yourself, here you are, with a fucked up knee!”
--
“Can... we talk, Iwa-chan?”
“We are talking.”
“In private.”
--
“I love you.”
“I love you too, you know that.”
“Iwa-chan... I never knew it was possible to be this dense.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Trashykawa?”
“I’ll rephrase. I’m in love with you, Iwa-chan. You know, love. Like, ‘my-heart-pounds-when-I-see-you’?”
--
“We’ll be eighteen soon, Iwa-chan!”
“So?”
“So that means we can do the deed!”
“What?”
“The deed. You know, the two man tango, the home run, the beast with two backs?”
“What?”
“Sex, Iwa-chan. God, you’re an idiot.”
--
“Onee-chan gave me condoms as an early birthday present...”
“Your sister’s way too fucking observant, Bakakawa.”
--
Oikawa pukes on the roof.
Alarm filters into his mind. Part of it is his own horror, the other part is Kuroo’s voice. “Oikawa? Are you all right?”
“F-Fuck,” he splutters, staggering back. His rifle clatters to the ground. He’s probably leaving DNA evidence everywhere. “Fuck.”
“What the fuck happened, Oikawa, you better tell me right now.”
“I’m not doing this,” he whispers. “I can’t do this.”
There’s a silence. “I’ll meet you there.”
Oikawa spits the rest of the bile from his mouth, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the taste of it lingering. He feels dizzy. He feels dead.
He doesn’t know what the fuck happened, so he can’t really answer Kuroo’s question. All he knows is...
He doesn’t want to kill Iwaizumi Hajime.
He can’t kill Iwaizumi Hajime.
And tomorrow, he’ll find out why.